Maria-062 (Laconia)
|birth= December 5, |death= |species= Human |gender= Female |height= 194.2 cm |hair= black |eyes= brown |cyber= |affiliation= * |rank= |specialty= |battles= |class= , Class I }} Maria-062 was a SPARTAN-II, Class I supersoldier of the UNSC. Like most Spartan-IIs, she fought in numerous campaigns during the Human-Covenant War. She served under NAVSPECWAR on active duty until 2547, when she sustained severe injuries during Operation UNDERTOW and was removed from active duty in order to safely recover; it was discovered during this recovery period that she was pregnant, and she was allowed to bring the child to term without being separated afterward as per the legal recourse afforded her by her contract. Her participation in tests on new versions of MJOLNIR powered assault armor proved invaluable, allowing the ONI to safely demonstrate the technology which would kill an unaugmented wearer. In 2552, Maria temporarily resumed active duty to repel the Covenant invasion of Earth and received promotion to the rank of Master Chief Petty Officer for her actions. Following the end of the Human-Covenant War, she continued to assist with ONI projects while partly raising her daughter. Biography Early Life Maria was born in late 2511 to parents Javier and Gloria Delgado on the colony world of Madrigal. She was their third child, preceded by twin sisters. The first three years of her life were spent in one of Madrigal's smaller cities, Tres Cruces, until her father fell on hard times and accepted an offer from a cousin to move to the capital and do factory work. The four of them settled into an apartment in downtown , and welcomed into the world shortly after the move. Little did the Delgado family know that their middle child had already been selected by Dr. Catherine Halsey as a test subject for Project SPARTAN-II, an experimental, top-secret program funded by the Office of Naval Intelligence. Maria, who had always been physically resilient and exceptionally smart, was one of the seventy-five colony children handpicked by Halsey for the project, her growth and development having been meticulously observed since birth. Halsey's observations of the candidate made mention of her eagerness to integrate socially, her tendency to hide her intellect in favor of making friends with her classmates (and extracting favors such as toys from adults), and her extraordinary performance in P.E. Maria was one of the seventy-five out of one hundred and fifty candidates who passed Halsey's final selection protocols, and was abducted from her family in mid-August of 2517 by an ONI black ops squad. Project SPARTAN-II On September 23, 2517, Maria was brought out of along with seventy-four other children and taken to an underground amphitheater in the Reach Military Complex, where Dr. Halsey informed them of their conscription into the SPARTAN-II Project. Maria was one of the children who stood and attempted to leave during the event, but she was shoved back into her seat by a handler and forced to remain still. During the harsh first weeks of indoctrination that followed, Maria spent most of her nights sobbing until she either fell asleep or was forced to be quiet by some of the more aggressive children, earning her the unwanted nickname "Crybaby." To add to this indignity, she was also made fun of for bedwetting and other side effects of her discomfort. She quickly fell into the category of lowest-performing trainees as her anxiety and isolation escalated, and despite efforts of a few other candidates to support her, it became evident that Maria was an unwanted burden to the majority of the candidates who were punished as a group when she failed to meet Mendez's expectations. Though she had two friends, and Jorge-052, both of whom tried to protect and support her when she lagged behind, the ostracization affected her deeply and she was constantly miserable over her apparent uselessness. While other trainees who hated their new life tried to escape, Maria simply sunk deeper into depression and finally refused to get out of bed one morning, despite being punished by trainers armed with stun batons. She lay unresponsive on the floor and took every abuse the trainers could heap on her without injuring her until Halsey intervened, having been called to the scene by Mendez. Much to Maria's surprise, she was taken to Halsey's office and given the choice between remaining in the program or having her memory erased and being returned to her family. When Maria immediately chose the latter option, Halsey questioned whether Maria understood just why she had been chosen to become a protector of humanity; Halsey then launched into a carefully-constructed explanation which presented the atrocities committed by the Insurrection, the Insurrection's known presence on Madrigal, and the possibility that if nothing was done to stop them, Maria's family might very well perish in a nuclear attack or some similar tragedy. A stunned Maria watched and listened as Halsey showed her footage of what had happened to several cities that had been devastated by Insurrectionist strikes. After this presentation, Halsey asked her if she could willingly abandon her duty if it meant that her family, and countless other families, might die at the whim of some terrorist; she then asked whether Maria was willing to disappoint Kirk and Jorge, both of whom were always encouraging her to do better and fighting off those who would bully her. Maria agreed to resume training after thinking it over, and was returned to the Spartan barracks. Though the incident served to motivate her, it shook her deeply and made her wary of Halsey. This wariness lingered throughout the rest of her training, resulting in a lack of the fondness other candidates exhibited toward the woman. During the seven years of special forces training and college-level academia that followed, Maria strove to prove herself as a competent candidate and became one of the many Spartans to neither overachieve nor lag. She quickly outgrew her more infantile tendencies and came into her own as an aggressive and tenacious trainee, to the point where her former tormentors now regarded her as a desirable teammate. She lacked the outstanding talents that other candidates possessed, such as Kelly-087's extraordinary swiftness or Linda-058's near-inhuman marksmanship, but always pushed to overcome whatever obstacles the trainers set before her. While Maria saw all of the other trainees as brothers and sisters, she was particularly close to the two children whom she'd befriended on the first day of boot, Jorge-052 and Kirk-018. The three of them made up the core of Gold Team, which also included trainees Cal-141 and . Like herself, Jorge was bilingual and part of the group of Spartans specially educated to be translators. Even though such things were forbidden among the children, Maria harbored a crush toward Kirk, who had been the little group's leader since day one. As the Spartans matured, that crush developed into something more, leading to many stolen moments and covert encounters between Maria and Kirk. One fateful day, Jorge-052 accidentally discovered the two of them together in a utility closet; even though he chose not to report them to Mendez, their relationship ended all the same. Graduation In 2525, when Maria and most of the other Spartans were fourteen years old, the second phase of the project was initiated: augmentation. Her body, which had prematurely developed due to endocrine therapy throughout her childhood, was subjected to a series of risky experimental treatments and surgeries designed to increase human performance to a superhuman level. Maria made it through all of the procedures without any permanently damaging side effects, but once she had recovered enough, she learned that Kirk-018 had experienced severe bone pulverization, a bad reaction to the muscular enhancement injections. She attended the funeral ceremony held on board the UNSC Atlas for the thirty trainees who had perished during augmentations; it was the last time she would ever see Kirk, who was on life support in a cylinder full of thick gel to keep his twisted body from moving. After enduring the pain of the surgeries and the shock of losing so many of her adopted family, Maria's lingering unease turned to resentment toward those who had put her into the Spartan-II Program, a sentiment that would lie concealed within her for years to come. The many weeks of physical therapy and advanced combat training that followed augmentations distracted Maria from her grieving, as well as the arrival of a new threat to the UNSC: the Covenant. The Spartans were introduced to the powered assault armor that would come to be their signature, MJOLNIR, and split into separate groups, divvied up to fight on battlefields across the galaxy. With her focus so sharply directed from personal trauma to an enemy that presented challenges the Spartans had never counted on facing, Maria settled into her role as a supersoldier, sidelining her grievances for the time being and expending all her energy on the one thing she knew: war. Military Career Maria fought against both human and alien enemies from 2525 to 2547, participating in numerous campaigns alongside what remained of Gold Team. Now Gold's leader, she slipped into the role of a Spartan commander with ease and displayed proficiency in directing her teammates. Her leadership resulted in a string of successes during their first deployments, which were against Insurrectionist foes. Her first real fight with the Covenant occurred on the colony of Shambhala, and the grueling experience there served to solidify her dedication to fighting for humanity. Now well-known for keeping a cool head and a steady hand, she was able to reel in the more emotive nature of her second-in-command Jorge-052 and together they kept each other balanced. Though Gold would see many more battles against the Covenant over the course of the war, the majority of their fights would be against their own kind, as the Insurrection sought to take advantage of the UNSC's steadily weakening state. By 2546, enough Spartans had died or gone missing for HIGHCOM to justify splitting up Gold Team and sending its members to separate locations. After Cal and Malcolm departed, Maria and Jorge fought as a two-man team for months until they too were separated. Just before they parted, an incident occurred in which both Spartans came under scrutiny for a suspected violation of the Spartan fraternization protocol; however, the need for their presence in fields of conflict was too great for an investigation to be instigated, so they were sent to their new posts without delay. Maria was dispatched to the contested colony of Vesper, where the UNSC was attempting to sabotage a Covenant mining operation. She and a team of ODSTs succeeded in stopping enemy efforts to siphon resources from the colony, but at a heavy cost; all but one of the ODSTs were killed and Maria was heavily injured. While administering treatment for plasma burns and other wounds, ONI medical staff discovered that Maria was pregnant. She was allowed to choose whether or not to sustain the pregnancy, and surprised her superiors by expressing the desire to see her child carried to term. To this end, she was removed from active duty under the guise of being too wounded to continue service, and remained secluded in ONI's care until her daughter was born. Unknown to most, even the Spartan-IIs themselves, their contracts contained specific legal recourse available to them under extenuating circumstances; Maria became the first Spartan-II to take advantage of this recourse, and secured the right to retain contact with her child in exchange for continuing to provide specific services to the Office of Naval Intelligence. Having thus agreed to remain at ONI's disposal while having a small role in her child's upbringing, Maria was assigned to Section 3's Materials Group and tasked with assisting in the production of the Spartans' MJOLNIR armor. Following the birth of her daughter, Maria chose to name her Éva for reasons which she kept to herself. Vice Admiral Margaret Parangosky, in an unexpected show of supposed graciousness, gave Maria the opportunity to view the file which contained all details of her life before SPARTAN-II in order to provide a proper surname for Éva. Though initially reluctant, Maria ultimately viewed the file out of a sense of obligation and was very affected by its contents; Parangosky used this to influence Maria so that the Spartan would resent Catherine Halsey and become wholly loyal to Parangosky instead. Éva was given Maria's former surname, Delgado, though Maria elected not to reclaim it and kept her Spartan tag. New Life From 2548 onward, Maria assisted in the development and testing of MJOLNIR Powered Assault Armor. With her at the Materials Group's complete disposal, the production of new and improved armor variants sped up significantly, with Mark V and VI models set to enter field usage by the early 2550's. Maria's involvement helped refine the prototype energy shielding system to the point where it could be efficiently utilized, along with many other advancements which would have been impossible without an augmented participant actually wearing the suit. Along with the Mark V and Mark VB models and their respective variants, Maria helped develop an early of the Mark VI which would be fielded by Black Team. Though she traveled to top-secret UNSC facilities throughout the Inner Colonies to participate in Materials Group projects, Maria's residence was located at the Special Warfare Center in , United Korea, where her daughter remained under the constant care of a dedicated team of professionals handpicked by Parangosky. Though often absent from the SWC and initially skittish of handling her child, Maria slowly warmed up to Éva and began to explore her role as a mother despite the limitations her duty placed on her. The Fight for Earth Post-war Life Physical Description Personality Despite the extensive indoctrination she underwent as a child, Maria has an easygoing and warm personality, and as per Margaret Parangosky's wishes has been through many sessions designed to acclimate her to normal social interaction. Unlike most SPARTAN-IIs, she is extroverted and can easily read the emotions of others. She is highly intuitive, much like Kurt-051, and often will prioritize gut feelings over official intel when necessary. She is capable of locking down her emotions, but chooses to express her feelings openly to differentiate herself from the machinelike Spartan stereotype. She will readily empathize with other humans and has been noted as a "calming" influence by analysts during her dealings with conventional special forces. That said, she knows when to use force, and can easily live up to the notion that a Spartan is a one-man death squad. Relationships Trivia Gallery Category:Class I Spartan-IIs